The present invention generally relates to application integration, and more particularly, to a tooling framework for supporting validation and editing of binding information for facilitating application integration.
Modern data processing systems often use Enterprise Information Systems (EIS) applications to provide the information infrastructure for an organization. An EIS provides services to clients via interfaces, whether local, remote or both. Resources provided to clients may include: a business object from an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) System; data stored in a database system; and data from transaction program in a transaction processing system.
If it is necessary to access these services remotely, one may turn to Web services, Java™ 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) Messaging or J2EE Connector Architecture using a resource adapter (Java is a trademark of Sun Microsystems Inc. in the United States, other countries, or both). Data in a canonical form such as an Extensible Markup Language (XML) document or Java bean is exchanged. Schema (XSD files) are usually used in order to capture type information for these services.
In general, metadata is information which describes a program's interfaces (type mapping information, data structures, message formats). Extraction of metadata from a program is necessary so that appropriate connectors and adapters can be created. In this context, metadata may capture binding information that can be used to transform data in a canonical form (an XML document or Java bean generated from the schema describing the type) to the native form expected by the EIS. For example, binding information would enable transforming an XML document or a J2EE CCI Record to the native Object used in a Peoplesoft system.
This makes process and web portal development very time consuming. In prior art systems, binding information for types has been captured in proprietary formats. For example, IBM® WebSphere® Studio Application Developer Integration Edition captures binding information in Web Service Definition Language (WSDL) using a format typeMapping WSDL extensibility element. It then delegates the generation of the transform to a generator that had to be supplied by the EIS. Any editing of the binding information was done by supplying a custom editing support. CrossWorlds® Object Discovery Agent and Business Object Editor supported binding information by treating it as an opaque string. The developer has to be knowledgeable about the syntax of the binding in order to make any changes. IBM, CrossWorlds and WebSphere are trademarks of International Business Machines Inc in the United States, other countries, or both.